


Stay Out of the Mirror

by leorate



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, M/M, Paranormal Investigators
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-06 00:46:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14630517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leorate/pseuds/leorate
Summary: High school can be murder.Literally.When Dirk Strider mysteriously vanishes in small-town Hauntswitch, no one wants to believe the only person who saw what happened.But Joey Claire swears there’s something in the school’s new mirror...and the school is going to have to pull together if they want to graduate with the same amount of people they started the year with.It’s the buddy cop/monster of the week/highschool au you never knew you wanted.





	Stay Out of the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> This is just sort of a fun little spooky, x-files type inspired fic, not sure how I feel about it yet so any and all feedback is appreciated!! 
> 
> Also, for some reason it says it’s 1/1 chapter but uhhh won’t let me change that, this won’t be the only chapter lol

5:34 am

 _creeeaaaaaakk_

The side door of Hauntswitch High audibly begged for some handiwork, or even just a splash of WD-40 on the hinges as star runningback, Dirk Strider, snuck into the school’s workout room at first light. He grimaced and shifted his duffel on his arm to try to quietly close the door behind him, but it hardly mattered anyways.

In a small town like Hauntswitch with a population total of barely 6,000, resources could hardly be spared to pay attention to off hours activity in the crumbling high school. 

Dirk set his bag down and cracked his neck with a yawn. His reflection in the wall length barre mirror copied his every move as he bent down to unzip his bag. That was his first mistake. 

Turning away from the mirror. 

Dirk pulled out a balanced katana from his bag and unsheathed it in the early morning light that bled in through the small windows. Coach didn’t approve of him practicing with swords, especially the week before a big game, but it was Monday and what Coach didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. 

His phone buzzed from his bag with a text he already knew would be from Jake, and a small smile graced his lips as he adjusted the shades on his face. That was another thing Coach wouldn’t approve of if he knew about. Or anyone else in this tiny town, for that matter. The downside of having a graduating class just shy of 100 was that it was nearly impossible to keep a secret. But he’d managed. They’d managed. 

Dirk stood perfectly still, sword parallel to his body, eyes closed. That was his second mistake. 

Something in the mirror moved. 

Dirk continued practicing, eventually sheathing his blade and wandering over to the weights. A sudden draft blew in and Dirk let out an involuntary shiver, clutching at his arms. He went to close the window, only to discover it was already closed. They all were. 

The chills Dirk had now were entirely unrelated to temperature. He went to investigate the air conditioning vent. 

He stepped over to the barre and peered upward, the vent was on the ceiling, adjacent to the mirror. It was too dark to see much. Dirk took off his shades and clutched them in his hand by the bridge as he leaned on the barre to get a closer look at the vent. Golden eyes narrowed, hand stretched toward the vent, everything happened too fast. 

Maybe Dirk felt himself being displaced. Maybe he felt himself slipping through the cold glass of the mirror. Maybe, just maybe, he felt a skeletal pair of hands, firm around his waist, yanking him in those last few seconds. 

All we know for sure is that there was a yelp, and then silence. Silence that was broken only by the sudden clattering of cheap sunglasses against the hardwood floor. 

Had Dirk still been there, perhaps he would have heard a small gasp. Seen a head duck down from the window of the workroom. Heard footsteps pattering frantically down the hall. 

But he wasn’t. 

So he didn’t. 

**One Week Earlier**

Dave Strider did not give a single shit about economics. Or, perhaps it was that he gave too much of a shit about economics. He thought it was pretty cool, actually. Stocks, markets, capital; sure, communism was better from a humanitarian perspective, but goddamn if pure, unadulterated capitalism wasn’t interesting as all hell. Free market and all that. 

Which, coincidentally, was why he didn’t give a single shit about this class. It was sucking all the fun out of it. He wished Terezi hadn’t gone and gotten a full year early acceptance into Yale’s fast track honors law program, then she’d still be in this shit town with him another year. Just till they graduated. But she’d gone and left him to rot with the rest of the losers they’d grown up with since kindergarten. 

Dave guessed he had the first day back blues, after all it had been a summer to remember. The last one before senior year, Terezi’s detective slash justice business had been at an all time high. It was a time honored summer tradition, that the pair combed the neighborhood for “mysteries” to “solve”, one that had started when the two binge-read Sherlock Holmes as kids. 

It was usually for dumb bullshit like finding lost pets or settling sibling rivalries, but it had been fun to pretend they were an equal partnership rather than Terezi being a fucking child prodigy and Dave being her plucky sidekick. She brought the brains and he brought the quips and one-liners, he supposed. 

Ugh. He was down just thinking about it. 

Praise for small miracles, because just at that moment, Dave was shaken from his glum reminiscing by the bell. Perfection. 

Dave ambled to his locker, he had free period to practice music next so he was in no hurry. 

“Dave, we’re feeling well this morning, I presume?” An all too familiar voice appeared behind him. “The dark circles are quite a bold look on the first day back, wouldn’t you agree?”

Dave smiled despite himself. He and his twin may not have always gotten along in the past, but he always enjoyed their banter. Especially since Roxy and Dirk, their fellow quadruplets, long story, also twins, had had to move in with them during their freshman year. Things had been standoffish and tense until they’d all settled into a comfortable, even friendly, routine. But Dave and Rose had appreciated each other’s familiarity ever since. 

“Oh, you know what I always say, Rose,” Dave leaned against the lockers and let out an over dramatic sigh. “Alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic.”

“Do you?” Rose tilted her head. “You know I simply can’t recall a single instance.”

“Yeah, usually I just say it in my head which is one problem. I also crowdsource it.”

“Oh? Do explain.”

Dave grinned. “You see, you’re alive, I’m awake, Dirk is alert, and Rox is enthusiastic. Equal responsibility.”

Rose quirked a brow. “How positively...Marxist, of you.”

“I try.” Dave shrugged and shoved his bag into his locker. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, free period is calling my name, so…”

“You know, I actually came with news to impart,” Rose smiled innocently as she fiddled with her tights absentmindedly. “Regarding Terezi.”

Dave’s breath faltered. “That so.”

“Mmhm. Well, indirectly.”

“Do spill the beans, sister dear.”

“Two of her cousins just transferred here, I thought you might be interested.”

Dave slammed his locker shut. “I’m not.”

“Really? Not even a bit?”

“What, Rose?” Dave ran a hand through his hair absentmindedly. “Look, I get it. Everyone is desperate for me to replace Rez as quickly as possible so you can all go back to doing your own thing again. You’ve got your weird ass goth book club where you talk about H.G. Wells and whether or not Virginia Woolf was a lesbian or just super feminist, Roxy won’t shut up about model U.N., and ever since Dirk made the football team-“

“You know he does that for scholarships,” Rose protested. 

“Whatever.”

“Are the two of you still fighting?

“We’re not on like, great terms, no.”

“Dave,” Rose sighed. 

“Rose,” Dave mimicked. “I may have free period, but you don’t. Get to class. Stop worrying about me.”

Rose fixed him with a long stare. “Alright. But we will resume this conversation at a later date.”

“Of course we will,” Dave muttered. He shoved his hands in his pockets and slumped off to the big practice room, praying that it would be empty. 

It wasn’t. 

Dave groaned as he heard an angry voice faintly emanating from the doors, unable to make out what it was saying. Upon opening the doors, he realized why. Whoever it was, they were speaking in a different language. Hindi. The angry voice stopped and a female voice picked up. Dave’s heart pounded in his chest. There was only one person in this small-ass town he knew who spoke Hindi and that was- 

“Terezi?” He burst in and looked around, expecting to see Terezi’s hideous glasses and badly dyed, fire-engine red hair. Instead, he was greeted by two, extremely confused, and equally unfamiliar faces. 

Both strangers looked to be about his age. Both had a stunning, medium complexion and thick, dark hair. The same hair that Terezi had before she botched it in the name of fashion and irony. The girl, nearly as tall as Dave (which was an accomplishment) rocked a short pixie cut, and the dude rocked a mean scowl. Dave wondered if it was because it looked like the poor guy barely broke 5’7”

“You know Terezi?” The girl asked, in faintly accented English, very politely. “Were you friends?”

“Of fucking course they were friends, Kanaya,” the shorter one huffed, sounding no less angry in English than he had before. “Why else would he have heard us speaking another language and assumed it was her? Pretty goddamn racist, if you ask me.”

“Whoa, hey,” Dave frowned. “Sorry no one else in this shit town speaks Hindi and I jumped to conclusions but that hardly makes me racist.”

“What-fucking-ever,” the guy crosses his arms. “And shit town is right, this place sucks ass.”

“You don’t get to say that,” Dave protested. He had grown up here, suffered here, he could say it sucks, but no one else could. Kind of like how you can bash on your siblings, but if anyone else did you would beat them till they bled. 

“Oh yeah? Who the fuck is gonna stop me, white bread?” Short guy snarled. “You look like you haven’t been in the sun since birth.”

Dave flinched involuntarily. The downside of small towns was also the upside. Everyone already knew each other’s business, so no one was ever surprised because they were already used to it. Meaning, it had been a while since Dave had felt the need to be self-conscious about his albinism. Damn the rest of his family for getting to look fucking normal. 

“Karkat,” the taller girl gently chastised, although there was real steel behind her tone. “You’re not making a very good first impression here. Apologize.”

“No, it’s fine,” Dave faked a smile through gritted teeth. “Yeah I have pale ass skin and hair, I like to think I look less circus show and more Paul Craddock but that’s fine, make fun of me or whatever. Have a nice day.”

And if it looked like Karkat’s face fell for just a moment before Dave turned around and stormed out, well. That must have been his imagination. 

**\------**

Rose LaLonde was not happy.

That is to say, as opposed to how she usually felt in English class, which was not necessarily “happy”, but more...superior. In control. The only other person in Hauntswitch who came even close to her literary prowess was her sister, Roxy, and she was in the other class period. Her teachers had learned by now that having two LaLondes in one classroom was, needless to say, a mistake. 

So for this to happen was completely unexpected. And entirely unwelcome. This new girl, Terezi’s cousin or whoever, was not about to hog the spotlight in the one class where Rose was the incumbent and unopposed queen.

“-so while I respect “No Fear, Shakespeare” publications for making his works more accessible to young readers, I have to say that the loss of some of his play on words, and the classic double entendre, strips his work of half the meaning! I mean, really, it is as if one isn’t even reading Shakespeare at all anymore. Take “Hamlet”, for example-”

Rose clenched her pencil so hard she heard the wood begin to snap. So it was going to be like this? Fine. It would be like this.

“Something I find interesting about that, actually,” Rose interjected, smiling toward the new girl in much the same way a shark might smile at it’s food before eating it. “Why don’t such versions exist for novels by female authors? Sure, there are abridged novels, but those are hardly comparable. Young children have just as much difficulty understanding, say, Jane Austen.”

The new girl with the pixie-cut smiled politely, almost too politely. “Of course. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, really, to not have been able to read Jane Austen until recently. Obviously I was able to comprehend advanced literature from a very young age, something you might not be able to say the same about-”

“Oh I assure you I have been reading from a much earlier age than you have most likely,” Rose turned her full head towards the new girl. “And I dare to say I still am reading at a more advanced level than you, even to this day.”

That patient smile never moved. “Oh I don’t doubt it. You see, while I do read very advanced literature, it’s always a bit more difficult for me considering English isn’t my first language and my family speaks Hindi at home.”

Rose clenched her teeth. “Oh, how positively enriching! My mother always spoke Yiddish around the house when I was growing up, so English was a bit like a second language for me as well.”

Even the new girl’s laugh was polite; delicate and pretty. Rose hated her.

“Second language?” She laughed again. “Ah, no. French is my second language. English… is my third.”

“Rose, Kanaya, as fascinating as this all is,” the teacher interrupted awkwardly. “We only have about ten minutes of class left and I’d like to continue going through the syllabus for the year?”

The new girl, Kanaya, flashed a brilliant, pearly white smile at the teacher. “But of course. Please, continue.”

Rose spent the last ten minutes seething quietly in her seat. Life wasn’t fair.

**\------**

“There’s a game next week already? That seems mighty early.”

Dirk Strider smiled as he sat down across from his friend, Jake English, in the school cafeteria for lunch. “It’s really not, though. I’ve had practice for the last month and a half.”

“Well I know that!” Jake said. “I don’t suppose they’d give you a break sometime, though, hm?”

“A break?” Dirk glanced up innocently as he rested his hand atop his companions on the table. “Whatever would I do with myself if I had a break?”

Jake turned bright red and slid his hand out from under Dirks, turning away. “Are you sure you want to do that here? There are watchful eyes abound, my dear fellow.”

“Let them watch,” Dirk grinned devilishly. “What’s the worst they can do?”

Jake smiled ruefully. “Gee, well for one, rumors would start flying.”

“It happens.”

“Mhm. Then, someone tells that perky cheerleader who always brings you energy drinks at halftime that you’re off the proverbial table.”

“I’m already off the table.”

“And then finally,” Jake’s expression sobered up. “Word gets back to your coach that his star running back is gay, and he benches you, which means…?”

Dirk ground his teeth and sighed. “No scholarship.”

“Ding ding ding!” Jake pantomimed ringing a bell, then softened his tone. “It’s not that I don’t want this, want you. I do. It’s just, well gee whiz, there’s certainly a lot of variables to consider aren’t there, Mr. Strider?

“I suppose there are,” Dirk agreed in a way that suggested he already knew this, and it occupied no small amount of his spare thought. “When did everything get so complicated?”

Jake smiled. “When everything became vaguely worthwhile in this bloody, forsaken town?”

The pair finished their meal in silence, feet intertwined beneath the table. A compromise. 

Dirk took a quick detour on his way back to his locker, just to see if Dave was at his locker. 

Bingo. 

“Sup?” Dirk leaned against the cold metal of the lockers next to where his brother was shoving books into his bag. 

“Don’t wanna talk to you,” Dave deadpanned from behind his shades. 

“We’re gonna have to talk about it eventually, Dave,” Dirk sighed. “Plus, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about. Uh, someone, actually.”

“Really?” Dave laughed bitterly, still refusing to make eye contact. “Now you wanna talk about it? What about the past three years you and Roxy moved in with me and Rose at Ms. Paint’s, you didn’t want to talk about it any of those times?”

“I didn’t know if you were ready-“

“What does that even mean?” Dave slammed his locker and turned toward Dirk. “You’re older than me by, what, a couple minutes? Did you think I wasn’t mature enough?”

Dirk ran a hand through his already messy hair. The Strider-LaLondes were a pretty fucked up group of quadruplets. Their parents, alcoholic and mentally unstable respectively, had decided they couldn’t be burdened with raising all four of their children, and seeing as Dirk and Roxy had been the first two to pop out so to speak, they got kept, and Dave and Rose were thrust into the system. 

Luckily, a kindly Ms. Paint fostered them for years before finally adopting them. When they learned about their siblings, the previously assumed twins contacted their pair online and kept up a correspondence for years. When it was learned that their biological parents had perished in a car accident, Ms. Paint said that the other two were more than welcome to live with them. 

It had been exciting and strange, stressful and scary, but the past few years things had run smoothly. Better than that, they’d felt like a real family. Then, Dirk had decided to finally break a certain piece of news to his brother. 

“I wasn’t sure how you would react,” Dirk said. “You’re kinda proving me right by throwing a fit about this, you wouldn’t have been able to handle it. But there’s something else I want to tell you-“

“Oh you’re gonna pull that?” Dave said. “Newsflash: we’ll never know! Because you never trusted me enough to say anything!”

“Dave-“

“No, you know what? No,” Dave pulled his bag on and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I don’t even know who you are recently. The Dirk I knew didn’t disappear for days on end without telling me where he was, he didn’t do fucking football, and he didn’t keep secrets from me!” 

And with that, Dave stormed off. 

“Well that went completely pear shaped,” Dirk muttered to himself.

 **— A week later** —

For Detective Latula Pyrope, it was just another Monday on the job. She was stuck in late night phone duty, as usual. The higher ups didn’t trust someone so fresh out of the academy and there was a stunning lack of cases to crack around here. The worst crime that happened in this stupid town was ding-dong ditching. 

The phone rang. That was a first. 

Latula set down her magazine and picked up the receiver. God, she hoped this wasn’t a prank call. Although, even that would be more interesting than nothing at all. 

“Hauntswitch Police Department, please state your name and the nature of your emergency?”

_”Hello? Hello?”_

“Yes, hello,” Latula repeated. “Please state your name and the nature of your emergency.”

 _”Um. Sorry, I was just. It happened this morning I should’ve called earlier but I didn’t know what to do.”_ The voice on the other end of the line seemed panicked, out of breath. _“I was- I was at the school, and, um, I was going to the gym. To practice. Because they just got a new mirror. Only it’s not actually a new mirror, it’s really old and kind of falling apart, but it still works, and I needed to practice, so I was going to the gym-“_

“Sweetie, I’m gonna need you to slow down,” Latula day forward in her seat, trying to scribble frantically on a notepad. “Take a deep breath, calm down a little, and tell me what happened, deal?”

 _“Sorry. It’s just- okay. Okay,”_ the voice on the other end took a deep breath. _“My name is Joey Claire...and I would like to report a missing person.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my other works and follow me on tumblr @ ectoflowermaid!! :)


End file.
